THE

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The news of the Manchester executions on the morning
of Saturday, 23rd
November, 1867, fell upon Ireland with sudden and
dismal disillusion.

In time to come, when the generation now living shall
have passed away, men will probably find it difficult
to fully realize or understand the state of stupor
and amazement which ensued in this country on the first
tidings of that event; seeing, as it may be said, that
the victims had lain for weeks under sentence of death,
to be executed on this date. Yet surprise indubitably
was the first and most overpowering emotion; for,
in truth, no one up to that hour had really credited
that England would take the lives of those three men
on a verdict already publicly admitted and proclaimed
to have been a blunder. Now, however, came the
news that all was over—­that the deed was
done—­and soon there was seen such an upheaving
of national emotion as had not been witnessed in Ireland
for a century. The public conscience, utterly
shocked, revolted against the dreadful act perpetrated
in the outraged name of justice. A great billow
of grief rose and surged from end to end of the land.
Political distinctions disappeared or were forgotten.
The Manchester Victims—­the Manchester Martyrs,
they were already called—­belonged to the
Fenian organization; a conspiracy which the wisest
and truest patriots of Ireland had condemned and resisted;
yet men who had been prominent in withstanding, on
national grounds, that hopeless and disastrous scheme—­priests
and laymen—­were now amongst the foremost
and the boldest in denouncing at every peril the savage
act of vengeance perpetrated at Manchester. The
Catholic clergy were the first to give articulate
expression to the national emotion. The executions
took place on Saturday; before night the telegraph
had spread the news through the island; and on the
next morning, being Sunday, from a thousand altars
the sad event was announced to the assembled worshippers,
and prayers were publicly offered for the souls of
the victims. When the news was announced, a moan
of sorrowful surprise burst from the congregation,
followed by the wailing and sobbing of women; and when
the priest, his own voice broken with emotion, asked
all to join with him in praying the Merciful God to
grant those young victims a place beside His throne,
the assemblage with one voice responded, praying and
weeping aloud!